Author: Carsten Agger

USA trækker sig ud af Irak – Mission Accomplished?

Patrick Cockburn i The Independent:

American forces leave behind a country which is a barely floating wreck. Its society, economy and very landscape have been torn apart by 30 years of war, sanctions and occupation. I first came to Iraq in 1977 when its future looked rosy, but it turned out I was visiting the country at the high tide of its fortunes, a tide that has been ebbing ever since. Iraqis have been engulfed by successive disasters: the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war starting in 1980; the defeat in Kuwait in 1991; the bloodily suppressed Shia and Kurdish uprisings the same year; UN sanctions amounting to a 13-year-long siege which ruined the economy and shattered society; the US invasion of 2003; the Sunni Arab war against the US occupation in 2003-7 and the Sunni-Shia civil war over the same period.

How many other countries in the world have endured such traumas? Is it any surprise that Iraqis are so heavily marked by them? The Iraqi government announces proudly that in May 2009 only 225 Iraqis died from war-related violence, a lower figure than we have seen in any month for at least four years. Of course this is far better than the 3,000 tortured bodies which used to turn up every month at the height of sectarian war in 2006-7.

Link: Special despatch: The truth about Iraq

Iranske dissidenter i fængsel – takket være Nokia og Siemens

Tænk på dette, næste gang du køber en Nokia-telefon eller en Fujitsu Siemens-computer. Begge firmaer tjener med største fornøjelse millioner på at levere overvågningsudstyr til et regime, der bruger det til at sætte folk, der siger deres mening eller organiserer protester, i fængsel:

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.

A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for “lawful intercept functionality,” a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement’s ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.

In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression.(…)

Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, “We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts.”

But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency’s Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to “monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].” (…)

Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who became a democracy advocate and was arrested in 2003 for his opposition to the Islamic republic, said there were rumors in Iranian opposition circles that the Germans had sold the state powerful new technology that would make their monitoring efforts more effective.

“My first reaction is, ‘Wow! Why do they do this?’ Don’t they know that this will be used against the people of Iran?” said Mr. Sazegara, who now lives in the United States.

“They facilitate a regime which easily violates human rights in Iran and the privacy of the people of Iran. They have facilitated the regime with a high technology that allows them to monitor every student activist, every women’s rights activist, every labor activist and every ordinary person.”

Update, 23/6 kl. 21.30: Politiken har nu også historien (25 timer efter modspil.dk 🙂 )

Link: Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran

Ezra Nawi – en israelsk helt (fortsat)

I forlængelse af dette indlæg fik jeg i dag et svar på min protest fra det israelske justitsministerium.

Den pågældende bureaukrat skriver blandt andet, at


1. Mr. Nawi arrives every week to southern mount Hebron area and recently also to
Etzion area and joins Palestinian residents there. Together with these Palestinian
residents he knowingly enters areas in close vicinity of Israeli settlements that are
closed military areas.
2. During these weekly occurrences, Mr. Nawi provokes the local residents.
Subsequently, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the Israeli Police arrive, and are
confronted by Mr. Nawi who has often uses insults and sometimes even force
against members of the security forces.
3. Mr. Nawi was detained, arrested and investigated several times for his behavior and on March 19, 2009 was convicted of participating in a riot and assaulting two Police officers (Cr.C. (Jerusalem) 3246/07 The State of Israel v. Ezra Nawi). His case is scheduled for sentencing on July 1, 2009.

Problemet med flere af disse oplysninger er, ud over den simple omstændighed, at hverken  bosætterne eller den israelske hær har noget som helst at gøre i Hebron-området, at de ganske enkelt ikke passer. Jeg har derfor sendt justitsministeriet dette svar, som også er sendt til Support Ezra-kampagnen og den israelske ambassade i Danmark:

Thanks for your response.

I note that Ezra Nawi has been arrested and behaving the way you describe while protesting the illegal harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the Hebron area.

I also note that the settlers´ presence in the area is illegal according to international law, as installing part of your own civilian population in an area that you occupy is a war crime.

I also note that we are talking about settlements in the West Bank of Jordan, an area that Israel is currently illegally occupying and in which the Israeli military has no business whatsoever.

I also note that the events which led to Ezra Nawi´s conviction are described thus on Wikipedia, citing a considerable number of reliable sources:

“During the incident for which Nawi was charged, which was filmed and broadcast on Israel´s Channel 1, he can be seen non-violently resisting the demolition of the home before being taken into custody by members of the border police. Despite the video, which does not show Nawi violently resisting the police, he was found guilty on March 19, 2009 by an Israeli court of assaulting a police officer and participating in a riot, which scheduled sentencing for July 1.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Nawi)

I hereby conclude that Mr. Nawi´s conviction seems to be unfair, and if so he deserves a complete exoneration.

And the Palestinian population on the West Bank deserve that the Israeli army once and for all withdraws from an area where the have no business at all, and whose continued occupation is a crime against international law for which I hope all responsible Israeli leaders will one day stand
trial.

In the meantime, Mr. Ezra Nawi should be set free and, as I said, exonerated.

best regards,
…

For slet ikke at tale om, at de burde give ham en medalje for at påtale, hvad alt for mange af hans medborgere tier stille med.

Link: Free Ezra!

Iran

To ting:

1. Det er stadig slet ikke sikkert, at Ahmadinejad virkelig tabte det valg. Det ved vi ikke, med mindre der kommer en pålidelig omtælling.

2. Folk er meget, meget vrede i Iran, og der er mange af dem.

Det spiller bare ikke længere så stor en rolle, om der blev svindlet med valget eller ej. Det er tydeligvis slet ikke længere det, men hele regimet, det handler om. Hvordan vil det ende?

Jeg vil ikke kloge mig på det. Må præstestyret give sig, eller ender vi med at se en jernnæve, der knuser al videre modstand? Begge muligheder står åbne lige nu. Men Iran er et stort land med en meget gammel kultur – det kunne være rart at se det vende politisk og kulturelt tilbage til verden som et frit land, som det ikke har været i hvert fald siden 1953; det år, shahen kom til magten ved et kup.

Iran – urolighederne spidser til

Som Citizen siger – Andrew Sullivan liveblogger.

Et udsnit – fra Twitter, via Sullivan:

number of foreign embassies in tehran accepting wounded. please contact your foreign ministries to open there embassy doors to the wounded

Some other Journalists arrested in Tehran.

Zhila Baniyaghoob’s (woman activist) home has been raided

Haft Hooz SQ. is on fire, Protesters are so angry and try to push back Bassij with Coctel Molotov…

A Bassij Base burn by Protesters at Navab St. (South Tehran)

eyewitness: young protester killed with bullet through the head on Navab street

clashes have intensified in tehran, shiraz and isfahan

another person dead in Azarabayjan ST in Tehran

Udviste irakere – hvad sender vi dem hjem til?

Fra dagens kronik i Politiken:

I 2004 tog en afvist irakisk mor tilbage med sin dreng på ca. syv år. Han blev kidnappet og myrdet, da moderen ikke kunne betale løsesummen.

To tilfælde af kidnapning er dokumenteret i UNHCR og Dansk Flygtningehjælps undersøgelse af årsager til, at tidligere frivilligt hjemsendte er kommet retur fra Irak. For mange hjemvendte udgjorde det en særlig sikkerhedsrisiko at komme fra Danmark, da Danmark er upopulært i Irak pga. Danmarks deltagelse i krigen og Muhammedtegningerne; de måtte forsøge at skjule, at de kom fra Danmark.

Desuden risikerer tilbagevendte flygtninge fra vestlige lande kidnapning og pengeafpresning, da mange irakere tror, de har penge. En kidnapning, der blev kendt i Danmark, var den af Abdul Karim, som var flygtet fra tortur under Saddam Hussein. Efter afslag på asyl i Danmark blev han udvist og udrejste i slutningen af 2006. Han blev kidnappet i Irak og mishandlet, men løsladt, efter hans familie havde fået forhandlet løsesummen ned til et beløb, de kunne betale. Flere irakere har ikke hus eller familie, de kan bo hos, og ingen steder, de kan skjule sig, når det er nødvendigt i Irak.

Lad os hertil lægge, at vi selvfølgelig sender dem “hjem” uden penge på lommen.

Når jeg skriver “vi”, er det med velberåd hu. Alle, der ikke aktivt bekæmper denne udvisning, må betragtes som medskyldige i, hvad der måske kommer til at ske de mennesker af ondt som følge af hjemsendelsen.

Link: Irak-aftalen står ikke til troende

Rystende og ynkeligt

Jeg havde forleden, 17.6.2009, dette læserbrev i Jyllands-Posten:

RYSTENDE OG YNKELIGT

Det var rystende at se DRs indslag 14/6 om de tyve børn blandt de irakiske flygtninge, der skal hjemsendes – og det var ynkeligt at se de konservatives integrationsordfører Helle Sjelle vride og vende sig på stolen, som hun forsøgte at retfærdiggøre det, som ikke kan retfærdiggøres.

Her i Danmark lader vi lov være lov og tillader intet “på den anden side”, mener Sjelle åbenbart – hvilket vist er så udansk, som det kan være. Her i Danmark lader vi nåde gå for ret, når det er tyve udviste børn og deres familiers tarv, vi ser på. Lad de irakere få asyl.

Læs også:

• 5000 gik på gaden til støtte for afviste asylsøgere (Kirkeasyl)

• En aftale, der ikke står til troende (Politiken)